


What We Found in the Fire

by salatuh



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Domestic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, OT3, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 14:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12937443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salatuh/pseuds/salatuh
Summary: Here is a little diddy I wrote for John Silver Appreciation Week on Tumblr. It is post-canon with my own kind of liberties that end up with an OT3...It’s SilverFlintHamilton time, guys. >:)





	What We Found in the Fire

_"You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again."_  
—The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

 

±±±

 

 

They lay by the hearth, the three of them. Three men from three different walks of life, whose lives intertwined in such ways that despite heartbreak, loss, war... they can now rest in a silent harmony. 

Three bodies, bare beneath a heavy wool blanket. Thomas received it one chilly day from their elderly widowed neighbor Mrs. Banner as a token of gratitude for the help him, John and James gave her with a run down fence in the Fall. 

The fire crackles and pops in its own dance and song, a soothing warmth ebbs its way over them. 

John props his head up and stares into the flames. He rests a large palm on Thomas' shoulder and lightly rubs into his pale skin while he sleeps peacefully on his side. He looks over Thomas and sees Flint lying on his back, eyes closed, but he is not breathing deeply in his telltale sign that he has reached a slumbering state just yet.

"Smells like Bath," Flint murmurs.

Silver crinkles his nose and wonders how James always always knows when he is watching. He shakes his head of dark curls and asks just as quietly so as not to wake Thomas, "What does?"

Flint raises his eyebrows and takes in a deep breath.

"The fire. The wood. It smells like Bath... When I burned it to the ground."

Thomas snuffles between them and unconsciously reaches for warmth in the form of Flint close by.

Silver watches James shuffle closer with a sad sunken look in his eyes. The stiffness in his mouth softens while he lifts a hand off his chest to caress Thomas’ greying temple, swiping the tufts of hair with the back of his fingertips. His heart warms at the calm disposition Flint carries whenever Thomas is near. 

A melancholy smile blooms on John’s lips before he quietly hums and furrows his brow in thought.

"No," he whispers.

Flint's eyebrows raise with mild agitation. John smiles fondly lost in thought for a moment.

"More like the Maroon island." Flint looks up to his warm gaze, blue sapphires alight with the reflection of the flames in his eyes. John brings himself flush behind Thomas, his stomach pressed to their lover's lean, bare frame under the wool blanket. "More specifically, it smells like the fire from that one evening... when you told me your story.”

John watches James’ stroke his hand down Thomas’ neck, down to his shoulder, palm open and lying atop John’s knuckles. The firelight paints the skin of their hands a mix between vermillion and a ruddy orange hue. John raises his index finger to rub against the side of James’ hand. He feels the grounding warmth of Thomas beneath their palms. 

James rolls over to bracket Thomas’ front while holding onto his lithe arm around his waist, careful to not rustle him to wakefulness. 

“Telling you that story was the spark that lit my own destruction.” James’ voice is so nearly silent as he breathes out those words to John in the short distance. He eyes Silver’s adam’s apple bob but the stare he returns to James is unwavering. He turns and scans Thomas’ peaceful face. Eyelids shining, his thin lips gently pressed together, air lightly puffing from his nostrils. He is serenity incarnate. 

“I thought I would never know myself again,” James continues. “That all I was to be was a raging fire that burned down everything in my path... And you...” James meets John’s tentative gaze. He turns his palm over and wraps his fingers around John’s wrist and softly presses against his beating pulse with the pads of his roughened fingers. “You destroyed  _him,”_ James’ breath comes out in short bursts before he closes his eyes to collect himself. He takes a deep breath and holds tighter to Thomas’ arm wrapped around him, to John’s wrist. “But you showed me that was not the end of  _James_.”

John loosens his taut jaw at the sight of James’ open vulnerability. Those jade eyes full of wetness threatening to spill over. He used to wonder if... when Flint cried, his tears would hiss and steam off the boiling rage he held just beneath the surface of his skin. But now...

“I had to stop you. I couldn’t let you go on in such a state,” John’s throat is thick with his own admission, with James’ final understanding of his actions those short years ago. “I had to bring you back to yourself. Because if you continued down that path...” John swallows and presses his lids tightly, squeezing out his own hot tears that stream down his cheeks and drip onto the nape of Thomas’ skin below. “I feared you would never come back. Not to me, not to  _anyone_.” 

John turns his palm to grasp onto a freckled forearm. He pushes himself closer still to Thomas before moving what remains of his left leg over his hip. He cannot hold back the sob that escapes his chest. 

Thomas finally stirs in his sleep and sighs out through his nose. 

James grips onto John’s forearm as he whips his head to see Thomas’ deep-set grey eyes open and take in his quivering face, his trembling jaw. 

Thomas’ brows furrow as he reaches to cup James' heated cheek. He fingers the saline wetness on his neck and looks up with a small confused grunt and immediately moves to pull John down to his flank. He grips the top edge of their cream wool blanket and fixes it over their waists before wrapping his other arm around James and pulling him close as well. 

Thomas stretches his legs out far enough that they pop out the bottom of their cover. The firelight flickers across his pale hairs, across the deep long strip of a scar down his shin, long healed in the years since he gained it in Bedlam. He soothes his palms over John and James’ backs and takes in a deep breath. Thomas watches the shadows of objects in their living room dance across the surface of its wooden ceiling. His eyes close as he exhales out. He focuses on the grounding weight of his lovers’ outstretched arms entwined over his flat stomach, right beneath his ribcage. 

“Smells like home,” he breaks the silence. James and John stare at each other with mirrored tired but mildly dazed expressions. Thomas winds his arms tighter around their shoulders. “The fire. The wood. It smells like our home.” 

The fire continues to crackle before them. An ever present entity that is stoked to fullness. Stoked into existence for the sole purpose of keeping them warm in their shared life. 

**Author's Note:**

> I can't get over these three, okay? lol 
> 
> Feel free to follow me on Tumblr @Silversexual so we can obsess over Black Sails and history ;)


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